argument, we might have incurred the charge of attempting to rear a superstructure, without a foundation to rest upon.

But in the execution of this introductory part of our subject, we would scarcely have refrained from noticing the indications of Divine wisdom and goodness in our mental constitution itself, even though our strictly proper, because our assigned task, was to point out these indications in the adaptation of this constitution to external nature. We could not forget that the general purpose of the work was to exhibit with all possible fulness the argument for the character of the Deity, as grounded on the laws and appearances of nature. But we should have left out

a very rich and important track of argument, had we forborne all observation on the evidence for the Divine perfections, in the structure and processes of the mind itself, and confined ourselves to the evidence afforded by the relations which the mind bore to the external world. In the adaptation of external nature to man's physical constitution, there are many beautiful and decisive indications of a God. But prior to these, there is a multitude of distinct indications, both in the human

anatomy, and the human physiology, viewed by themselves, and as separate objects of contemplation. And accordingly, in this joint undertaking, there have been specific labourers assigned to each of these departments. But we have not had the advantage of any previous expounder for the anatomy of the mind, or the physiology of the mind; and we felt that to have left unnoticed all the vivid and various inscriptions of a Divinity, which might be collected there, would have been to withhold from view some of the best attestations in the whole range and economy of nature, for the wisdom and benevolence of its great Architect.

But to construct a natural theology on any subject, it is not necessary to make of that subject a full scientific exposition. The one is as distinct from the other, as the study of final is from the study of efficient causesthe former often lying patent to observation, while the latter may be still involved in deepest obscurity. It were a manifest injury to our cause, it were to bedim the native lustre of its evidences, did we enter with it among the recondite places of the mental philosophy, and there enwrap it in the ambi

guity of questions yet unresolved, in the mist of controversies yet unsettled. Often, though not always, the argument for a God in some phenomenon of nature depends upon its reality, and not upon its analysis, or the physical mode of its origination—on the undoubted truth that so it is, and not on the undetermined, perhaps indeterminable question of how it is. We should not have shrunk from the obscurer investigation, had it been at all necessary. But that is no reason why time must be consumed on matters which are at once obscure and irrelevant. It is all the more fortunate that we are not too long detained from an entry on our proper task, among the depths or the difficulties of any preliminary disquisition which comes before it-and that the main strength of the argument which our mental constitution, taken by itself, furnishes to the cause of theism, lies not in those subtilties which are apprehended only by few, but in certain broad and palpable generalities which are recognised by all men.

But there is another explanation which we deem it necessary to make, in order fully to reconcile the actual topics of our essay, with the designation which has been prefixed to it.

If by external nature be meant all that is external to mind, then the proper subject of our argument is the adaptation of the material to the mental world. But if by external nature be meant all that is external to one individual mind, then would the subject be very greatly extended; for beside the reciprocal influence between that individual mind, and all sensible and material things, we should consider the reciprocal influence between it and all other minds. By this contraction of the idea from the mental world to but one individual member of it—and this proportional extension in the idea of external nature from the material creation to the whole of that living, as well as inanimate creation, by which any single man is surrounded-we are introduced not merely to the action and reaction which obtain between mind and matter; but, which is far more prolific of evidence for a Deity, to the action and reaction which obtain between mind and mind. We thus find access to a much larger territory, which should otherwise be left unexplored-and have the opportunity of tracing the marks of a divine intelligence in the mechanism of human society, and in the framework of the social and

economical systems to which men are conducted, when they adhere to that light, and follow the impulse of those affections, which God has bestowed on them.

But in the progress of our argument, we come at length to be engaged with the adaptations of external nature, even in the most strict and limited sense of the term. In the origin and rights of property, as well as in the various economic interests of society, we behold the purest exemplification of that adjustment which obtains between the material system of things and man's moral nature— and when we proceed to treat of his intellectual constitution, it will be found that the har'monies between the material and the mental worlds are still more numerous, and more palpably indicative of that wisdom which originated both, and conformed them with exquisite and profound skill to each other.